A/HRC/34/29 B. Equal access to work opportunities 22. Equality in the exercise of the right to work involves non-discrimination in accessing work opportunities. Women’s higher unemployment rates, as well as occupational segregation, are symptomatic of discrimination in access to work opportunities. To achieve substantive equality, States should adopt supportive policies, combat discriminatory practices, and change cultural or religious expectations about women’s roles at home and in the family that hinder their transition from school to work. 1. Unemployment 23. While the right to work is not construed as an absolute right to obtain employment, States have an obligation to ensure equal access to work opportunities. A State in which a significantly higher number of women are unemployed is failing to discharge its obligations to fulfil the right to work and to ensure non-discrimination in the exercise of the right to work. The principle of progressive realization also entails the gradual reduction of women’s unemployment. To that end, States have an obligation to implement effective and targeted measures, to the maximum of their available resources. 24. Research converges on the importance of adequate economic policies to effect change in women’s employment opportunities. Economic policies that do not lead to the creation of jobs have a detrimental effect on women’s equal access to employment. In fact, policies targeting women’s employment in the context of jobless growth will have only a limited redistributive effect, reallocating some jobs from men to women. 11 Consequently, in a 2016 report, UN-Women stresses the importance of creating additional decent jobs for women, as well as improving their access to them. Specifically, it is recommended in the report that macroeconomic policies depart from traditional goals of deflation, and instead stimulate economic activity and increase demand for labour. In the report, UN-Women also calls for increased social spending so as to create decent jobs in sectors such as health, education, and care.12 25. Employment policies should provide for employment services that cater to the specific challenges faced by women, to ensure that they do not leave the workforce or resort to precarious jobs after childbirth and to facilitate their re-employment after career interruptions. This could include specialized placement assistance, as well as training programmes linked with prospective employment opportunities. Some States have put in place incentives for companies to recruit women who return to the workforce after career breaks. 26. Because of the criterion of sex intersecting with other factors such as race, ethnicity, colour, religion, national or social origin and disability, many women experience multiple forms of discrimination and face serious hurdles in exercising their right to work. For example, women with disabilities face greater difficulty in securing employment. In this regard, laws should require employers to ensure an accessible work environment and the provision of reasonable accommodation. 27. Discriminatory legal provisions and policies such as those on access to certain positions on the basis of ways of dressing, 13 different mandatory retirement ages for men and women, and provisions for revoking the work permit of migrant women upon 11 12 13 6 José Antonio Ocampo and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Towards Full and Decent Employment (2008), p. 70. UN-Women, Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights (New York, 2015), p. 9. See, for example, CEDAW/C/NOR/CO/8, para. 29.